Victory: The Surrender

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The President had to get on with the overwhelming business of history. Last week, having loosed a new force upon the world and welcomed a new ally into the Pacific war, a part of his business was to wait and to wonder, like other men, whether all that he had done had been worthwhile.

Friday morning he was up early as usual, and was about to leave his rooms on the second floor of the White House when a War Department messenger arrived with a radio dispatch. The President took the piece of paper and read:

"In obedience to the gracious command of His Majesty the Emperor. . . ."

Three years, eight months, three days and 75,000 American lives after Pearl Harbor, the Japs were beaten. They knew it, and they wanted to quit "as quickly as possible."

Harry Truman, President for four months, still got a thrill out of great events and his part in them. The bright hazel eyes of the plain man from Missouri raced across and down the yellow page:

". . . The Japanese Government are ready to accept the terms enumerated . . . at Potsdam on July 26, 1945 . . . with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogative of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler. The Japanese Government hope sincerely that this. ..."

There, broken in midsentence, it ended. It was unofficial: a Domei dispatch broadcast by Radio Tokyo at 7:35 a.m. (Truman time), picked up by listening monitors on the Pacific Coast, and teletyped to Washington. It was nothing that a President could formally discuss with his Allies, or reply to. But a man could talk about it. The President wanted to talk to somebody, and he immediately summoned four men: Admiral Leahy and Secretaries Byrnes. Stimson, Forrestal.

Truman told them to hurry. Byrnes, pleased and excited, almost ran through the lobby and into the President's office. Half an hour later, when they left, Forrestal was taut and hopeful. The reporters, he said, ought to have something within 30 minutes. Forrestal was wrong.

Hell & High Water. Across the world, over the uncertain radio channels between Tokyo and Europe, the same message in diplomatic code creaked along via the neutral governments of Sweden (for relay to Russia and Britain) and Switzerland (for relay to the U.S. and China). While the world throbbed with the known news, the President went on with his day's work.

His first scheduled caller was Representative Mike Mansfield of Montana, a Congressional authority on Asiatic affairs. Afterward, Mansfield felt free to say publicly that the U.S. should not and could not guarantee to leave intact "the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler."

Truman talked over that condition with other callers, and before the day was out his attitude was well known. He was inclined to make no concessions whatsoever to His Majesty the Emperor (the earthy President would normally think of the Son of Heaven as "that bastard"). Come hell or high water, Harry Truman was in a mood to demand complete surrender, qualified only by the original Potsdam terms and their predecessor, the 1944 Cairo Declaration.